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Thursday, December 20, 2012

Samsung Galaxy Note II S Pen tips and tricks

By Jack Wallen

If you’ve gotten your hands on the new
Samsung Galaxy Note II, you’ve already discovered that it the best of both
possible worlds — half tablet and half phone. One of the biggest draws of the
Note II is the stylus, which they refer to as the S Pen. Most users don’t quite
understand all that can be done with a stylus, so this post is dedicated to
helping you get the most out of this particular feature.

Before
I get started, I have to mention that, although this isn’t a review, the
Samsung Galaxy Note II might well be my favorite Android device to date. Why?
It is truly the perfect amalgamation between phone, tablet, and pen/paper. If
the features of this device migrate into a full-sized tablet, Samsung would
havethetablet to own. Period.

With
that said, let’s dig into making your Note II experience a brilliant one.

Using
the S Pen

Out of the
box, it may not seem like the S Pen really is that embedded into the device.
That’s because, by default, a number of the settings are turned off, primarily
to save battery life. Yes, some of the stylist settings do drain the battery,
but you purchased this device because of the stylist, not in spite of it.

So, what
features do you turn on? Let me go through them all so you can decide which
ones you will want to keep. Almost all of these features are found in the S Pen
settings by taping Menu | Settings | S Pen. In this window, you can turn on the
following features:

·Open
Popup Note: This will open a small window (even when you have another app open)
that allows you to take notes

·S
Pen keeper: Sound an alert and show popup when you walk with the device without
attaching the pen

·Air
View: Enables the Note II to detect the nub of the pen, even before it touches
the screen — you can get information to pop up (or windows to open) just by
hovering the pen over the proper spot

·Quick
Command: You can launch anything with a gesture

That is not
all of the cool features you’ll find. The keyboard also allows for OCR
handwriting recognition, but it’s not enabled by default. To enable this
feature, follow these steps:

·Open
an app that used the keyboard

·Long-press
the Mic button (directly right of the Sym button)

·In
the Samsung keyboard settings window, tap to enable Pen detection

·Turn
off predictive text (it will get in the way of OCR)

Quick
Commands

As I mentioned
earlier, you can set up Quick Commands that allow you to launch nearly anything
with a couple of gestures from your S Pen. You first have to enable this in the
Settings, and then configure the gestures. Before you configure the gestures, let’s
examine how this feature works.

On your S Pen,
you’ll see a tiny button on the shaft. If you hold that button down and then
draw a line on the home screen from down to up. This new window allows you to
input a command and keyword to launch an app.

To configure a new command, tap on
the gear in the upper right corner of the Quick Commands window. To
create a new command, do the following:

1.In this new screen, tap the plus
sign [+]

2.Select either an application or
function (depending upon your need)

3.Scroll through the list and select
either the function or the application

Depending on what you’ve selected,
there will be keywords to be included. For example, if you want to add a Quick
Command for Gmail, you can then include one of the keywords:

·Recipient

·Message

·Message+recipient

Each of the above means you draw the
command and then write either the name or the recipient in the OCR window. The
final option means you’ll draw the command and then write the message, which
will then automatically go to a recipient configured in the command.

Let’s say, for example, I’m going to
create a Quick Command to send an email to Bob in my office via Gmail. Here are
the steps: